Long distance service is a valued service. It allows one to call outside of a geographic region. That is, most telephone service providers provide two types of service: local service and long distance service. Long distance has historically been relatively more expensive due to complexities in connecting callers from geographically remote regions.
Given the expense of long distance, many telephone service companies provide separate service options, i.e., methods of obtaining long distance service. For example, a popular and convenient service option relates to being able to call long distance from a home telephone. In essence, the home telephone service provider provides access to both local and long distance. All calls are monitored and any fees incurred are billed on a monthly basis. This “post-paid” system is highly convenient to users.
As an extension to this service, many users have post-paid “calling cards.” The calling cards have a toll free number and a personal identification number (PIN) that allows the user to access long distance from a phone, other than the home phone, and have the fees billed along with the monthly bill. Such post-paid calling cards are extremely popular with parents of children living away from home because the children have long distance access and the parents are able to pay the bills. One drawback with existing post-paid calling cards is that users frequently abuse their long distance privileges. Many students or others using the calling cards will run up the fees and make it extremely difficult for the person responsible for paying the bill to fulfill their responsibility. As a result, “pre-paid” calling cards have been gaining in popularity. Pre-paid calling cards are limited long distance accounts where the purchaser provides money up front for a limited amount of long distance service, i.e., a limited number of minutes. In exchange for the money, the purchaser is provided a toll free number and a PIN number, similar to the post-paid option, which allows the purchaser to make long distance calls. Although referred to as calling “cards,” the card itself is merely a way to carry the toll free number and PIN in a convenient way. In this case, however, the service provider monitors the number of minutes used, and once the pre-paid limit is reached, the service is terminated. Once terminated, the toll free number and PIN combination is no longer valid. Such a debit feature prevents users from abusing long distance. An additional benefit relates to the fact that these can be sold over the Internet.
Pre-paid calling cards suffer from at least two drawbacks, however. First, with pre-paid calling cards customers have multiple bills, one for their local service and home telephone long distance service and one for their calling card long distance service. Some customers may even receive separate bills for their local and long distance services. Second, and quite importantly, the pre-paid calling cards tend to be fraudulently acquired. For instance, since pre-paid calling cards are sold independently, any user can purchase a pre-paid calling card without any affiliation to a long distance carrier. Consequently, many fraudulent purchases have occurred, especially where the purchase has occurred over the Internet. For example, when calling cards are offered over the Internet, the typical purchase involves a purchaser requesting a calling card, the purchaser providing a credit card as a means of payment. In response to validating the credit card, a toll free number and PIN combination, i.e., a “calling card” is transmitted back to the purchaser. Unfortunately, however, the calling cards used are often stolen or are otherwise being used without permission. Since there is no address or name of the actual purchaser, either the credit card company or the long distance carrier is forced to pay for these losses.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.